Social Sabotage: How to Deal with Manipulative Friends

by Teen Vogue

It came out of nowhere when I was in eighth grade. Gabby* wanted to ruin my life,” remembers Addison,* sixteen, from North Carolina. “My best friend got a text from her that said, ‘If you hate Addison, forward this to everyone you know.’ It took a day for the whole school to get the message, and soon after that all my friends disappeared. I asked Gabby why she was doing this to me, and she just laughed and walked away.” Addison was distraught: “I spent a lot of time in my room asking myself, Why me? What could I have done to make her do this to me?”

When it comes to social sabotage, the options are limitless: ridiculing someone behind her back; convincing everyone else in the grade to stop speaking to a victim (as in Addison’s situation); purposely excluding a friend or a classmate by huddling together, whispering, and telling inside jokes when she wants to join the group; organizing or inviting someone to a social activity when you know she can’t go; or texting her information about the event when you know she won’t get it. Yes, they’re all mind games and examples of nasty behavior—but, according to teens, also the status quo in the quest for popularity. “It’s as if someone told teens that they’re in a race for social status—like in a reality TV show—and they have to win no matter what the cost,” says Alexandra Robbins, author of the new book The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School (Hyperion). “But it’s more than a game you’re playing—you’re playing with people’s feelings.”

Consider Nina’s case: “When I was in eighth grade, there was a classmate who got every girl at school to hate me. So I became ‘that girl’ who was friends with boys,” the Los Angeles native recalls. “I later found out that the reason she hated me was because during lunch one day I sat with someone who happened to be the guy that she liked. So
basically, all the girls hated me because I was friends with all the boys—but I was friends with all the boys because all the girls hated me.”

At the time, Nina had no idea why her friend chose to target her. However, experts say that social sabotaging usually comes down to at least one of three feelings: jealousy, rejection, or vengefulness. All three emotions played a part when seventeen-year-old
Emily* was a victim. “My friend Sasha* freaked out when I got accepted to MIT and she got deferred. She started spreading rumors about me and boys, refused to talk to me, and posted a lot of aggressive Facebook statuses. She did everything to ruin one of the best days of my life,” Emily remembers. Despite Sasha’s increasingly hostile actions (including trying to break into Emily’s computer and putting down her family’s financial situation in front of friends), Emily never confronted her social saboteur. “I was afraid that
there’d be another meltdown, possibly bigger than the first, because it was the final round of acceptances and we’d both applied to Princeton and Harvard,” she
admits. In fact, most girls won’t directly address the issue with each other or talk things through with their bully face-to-face when they’re hurt or angry. “Girls convince themselves that in the short term it’s better not to say anything, but actually in the long run it’s a disaster,” says Teen Vogue contributor Rachel Simmons, author of The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence (Penguin). “It’s a huge cause of drama and pain.”

And when girls are caught in the act, they often deny it or put the blame on the victim. Whether they refute bad behavior (“I didn’t know you wanted to go”) or they mask passive-aggression with niceties (“You don’t like those girls—I didn’t want to put you in an awkward situation”), excuses tend to be just that. Simmons says: “One of the ways girls manipulate each other is by controlling their versions of events. When you confront a girl and tell her your side of the story, she tells you you’re wrong. So then you give up your interpretation of the incident and let somebody else define it. That’s
when you lose your power—you start to wonder what’s true and what’s right.”

Social sabotaging often teaches girls to distrust one another and to accept unsupportive friendships. But how do you stop it? Start by asking yourself some basic questions: If I don’t confront the aggressor, what message am I communicating? How is her behavior impacting my life? Who can I go to for help? If the social saboteur is your (so-called) friend, then ask yourself: What are the three things I deserve to have in a friendship? Is my friend who is undermining me acting according to those three things? Do I truly believe the sabotaging will stop, or am I hoping for the best and putting all the power in her hands? And if you are ever in a situation where she later apologizes to you, don’t say, “It’s OK,” because that conveys you are fine with what she did. You aren’t. Instead, say, “Thank you.” Saying thanks recognizes how hard the experience was for you but also communicates that you acknowledge and appreciate the apology.

Ultimately, your job is to decrease the drama. So unless you feel physically unsafe around the perpetrator, have the conversation with her in person. First prepare what you’re going to talk about and give concrete information about what’s happening to you that you don’t like. You don’t want to say, “You’re being mean to me.” If you’re vague,
you give the other person the opportunity to dismiss you. You also need to be ready for a push back—what the other person is going to say when you approach her—because chances are, she isn’t going to agree with you. She may say things to distract you, try to make you feel insecure, or threaten to end the friendship. Don’t forget that the goal of your conversation is to communicate your anger in a way that treats you and the other
person with dignity.

Remember: No matter how hard confronting a friend is, it’s better than doing nothing. When you demand to be treated well, you select better friends. Addison says, “After eighth grade, when I found out that Gabby was switching to a different high school, I cried with happiness. Now that I’m in tenth grade, I’m really careful about how I choose my friends. And I do have good friends—people I can really trust.”